Whispers in the Dark - Maya Banks [83]
“So you can’t heal?” Donovan asked.
“No. I can’t even control my telepathy. I heard Nathan. But why not Swanny? Why not everyone else? It’s frustrating. I’ll hear someone out of the blue. They may not even be in danger. It could be perfectly normal. Someone summarizing a grocery list. Or someone in need. Someone sad. Happy.”
“It sounds pretty damn awful,” Ethan said grimly. “How the hell do you deal with that? It would make me crazy.”
“But you did heal,” Donovan said, his brow creasing in concentration. “You were a conduit for Grace. I’d say that makes you every bit as valuable as Grace.”
Shea shrugged. “Who knows if that’s what they think? I haven’t stuck around long enough to ask questions. I just know I don’t want my sister anywhere near them.”
“I think it’s naïve to think they wouldn’t want to harness your abilities as well,” Donovan persisted.
“Their only concern when they held me down and beat me was to extract information about Grace,” she said flatly.
Donovan held up a hand. “Bear with me here. I’m not trying to be an asshole. They beat you, but you told Nathan it was a methodically executed beating. They hurt you, no doubt, but they didn’t damage you. They were careful not to risk hurting you seriously, and by that I mean broken bones, internal injuries. They were trying to manipulate you with pain and fear but they had no intention of killing you.”
“Well, of course not. I hadn’t told them anything about Grace.”
Donovan shook his head. “They want you both, Shea. You need to realize that. You’re as valuable to them as your sister. How would they even know what the full extent of your abilities are? They haven’t had access to you since you were a child.”
“He’s right,” Nathan interjected. He smoothed his hand over her leg as he spoke.
“What happened?” Ethan asked. “How did you end up with the Petersons? You were raised as their children and they never told you the truth. You have no memory of the laboratory?”
Shea shook her head. “In her journal, Andrea wrote that she and Brandon grew increasingly upset over our treatment. They’d been with us, studied us since our births, and they felt a bond to us. They considered us theirs because no one else acted as our parents. They planned their escape meticulously. For months. And then one night, they took us and ran.”
“Amazing that they were able to keep you hidden from them for all those years,” Donovan murmured.
“We moved a lot.” She turned to Nathan, a frown twisting her lips. “We talked about this before and it makes even less sense to me now. We never had a lot of money. Mom and Dad always scraped by doing jobs where they could be paid cash. But then we moved to that house in Oregon. You saw it. It’s huge. It’s on the ocean. It has state-of-the-art security and surveillance. We never seemed to worry about money after we moved there. So what happened? Why did we suddenly stop running? Where was the money coming from? They didn’t work. They spent their time homeschooling us, making sure we never went out in public. We didn’t have friends. I’m sure the townspeople thought we were crazy recluses.”
The men traded frowns. Swanny sat forward, his fingers forming a point. He glanced at Nathan and then at Ethan and Donovan. “That’s a damn good question. It certainly would appear that the Petersons got help from someone. Was there anything in the journal to explain it, Shea?”
“No. That’s what’s frustrating. She chronicled the events of our early years and she did so after the fact. It was like a written account almost as if she wanted us to know the truth one day. But her entries stopped when we moved to Oregon. Her last entry only says, ‘God willing, we won’t have to run any longer.’ ”
“Pretty damn cryptic,” Nathan muttered.
“It certainly adds another dimension to this whole mess,” Donovan said in a grim voice. “The Petersons got help from someone, but who? And what was their motive?”
Shea rubbed her forehead in an attempt to ease the strain and the thudding ache that pounded at her temples. Nathan pulled her to him and kissed